The World Health Organization warned in a recent report that over a billion young people are at risk for permanent hearing loss. One of the main culprits is a widely used device for listening to music — the smartphone.
Anything where you’re putting sound into the eardrum, that’s something as a society that we need to take a closer look at,” says Rex Banks, chief audiologist at the Canadian Hearing Society.
“That’s because loud noises damage the cilia of the inner ear, the tiny hair-like structures that change sound waves into electrical signals that are carried to the brain. The damaged cilia never grow back. “Once they’ve been damaged, that’s irreversible,” says Banks.
